A Zolriasatein - Msc student of Nanomaterials ,Department of Materials Engineering, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran
N Nemati - Msc student of Nanomaterials ,Department of Materials Engineering, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran
R.A Khosroshahi - Assistant professor, Department of Materials Engineering, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran.
M Emamy - Assistant professor , Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran.

Pre-alloyed -Al12Mg17 intermetallic compound were milled in attritor ball mill in order to understand the structural evolution during mechanical milling (MM). The phases evolution and microstructure were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The crystalline size and internal strain were evaluated by XRD patterns using Williamson–Hall and Scherrer methods. Scanning electron Microscopy (SEM) was used to study powder morphology, particle size and distribution. The results demonstrate that, Due to the brittleness of the starting material, the -Al12Mg17 phase already displays a strong decrease of the grain size in the first stages of milling as a result of the repeated fracturing of the powder particles. With increasing milling time, a submicron intermetallic powder with nanocrystalline grain size in the range of ~30 and ~100 nm (from X-ray diffraction, XRD) and particle size in the range of ~200 nm and ~1 μm (from SEM micrographs) is formed.

Mechanical milling; Intermetallic compound; Nanocrystalline structure